A real-time command center is a facility that monitors, operates, and addresses problems as they occur on networks. The class of such networks includes transportation networks, rail networks, city and regional operations networks, data networks, and even non-physical networks such as supply chain networks. These centers are concerned with managing the complex systems which exist in such networks: typically there are multiple sets of physical and institutional constraints on their operation. The constraints on the operations are often too difficult to be managed manually in an effective and efficient manner. In many cases, some constraints of the system may be well understood by command center personnel, but the challenge arises because different parts of the system have overlapping and in some cases contradictory constraints.
An example is in a city operations center, where constraints may be present on the deployment of water pipe repair crews operating at certain times of the day, and the potential conflicts that can arise even when those constraints are satisfied if traffic congestion is expected on those parts of the road network due, for example, to a special event in the city or even to planned road closures. In short, it is unsatisfactory to rely on experts to make the most effective decisions across the full gamut of operational characteristics involved in managing real-time command centers because it is simply beyond human ability to effectively process the full range of overlapping interactions. The inventors of the present disclosure have recognized that in such cases, tools are needed to characterize the operations and handle the multiple, overlapping constraints and provide effective optimized suggestions to the command center personnel.
In addition to understanding the overlapping and sometimes contradictory physical and institutional constraints, the inventors in the present disclosure have also recognized that another aspect that is missing in real-time command centers today is the ability to assess the likely outcome of taking actions on the complex network which is being managed. Usually, assessing the likely outcome of one or more potential actions requires some type of tool, such as a simulation software program. However, one main impediment to using such simulation programs to assess the likely outcomes of several complex actions is that the time taken to run such software is prohibitively long. Indeed, it is often the case that the software would require tens of minutes, or perhaps much longer, to complete, after which time the event would have evolved considerably without having been addressed effectively. A second main impediment is that in general simulation software programs do not accurately reflect real-life conditions but rather represent an idealized state of the system. To provide concrete assessments of actions to be taken in a real-life event, the simulation program would have to correspond very closely to the real-time state of the system.